Why Safari 3 on PC? For the iPhone!
June 12, 2007 | 2 Comments
I love Safari on my Mac. It outperforms Firefox for me, the built in RSS support is wonderful, the tabs work better than any of the other browsers, and private browsing (better known as porn mode) can’t be beat. However… it’s really no competition for Firefox or Internet Explorer on the PC platform as an overall browser.
So.. why Safari on the PC? Does Apple truly believe they can compete with Mozilla and Microsoft? I’d say they are not that misguided…
Safari is now available on PC purely to test iPhone applications.
There are a lot of web developers who will be able to develop small applications to deliver through Safari on the iPhone starting on June 29th. Yet, a large majority of the developers will not have iPhones and don’t have Macs. This means Safari needs to be made available for testing on PC for those developers to add value to the iPhone. Although this would be made better if Apple cloned Firebug and rolled that in out of the box…
As far as actual browser usage, I would be shocked to see the web adoption pass 6% for Safari (Apple claims they currently get 4.9%). This may sell a couple more people on Macs, but Safari is not iTunes. It does not stand head and shoulders above competitor software. If they do expand market share in Safari and get a few more people onto a Mac, this is a bonus.
In conclusion… I’m glad to see Safari on PC. Hopefully more web applications will get tested with it… but don’t be fooled this is a move to bolster the iPhone, nothing more.
Tags: apple, browser, explorer, firebug, firefox, internet explorer, iphone, mac, macs, mozilla, osx, pc, safari, web, web application
Simple Safari News Aggregation
October 9, 2006 | Leave a Comment
If you are trying to stay up to date on multiple news sites or blogs, you already respect the power of RSS. I’ve been asked a lot about what I use for aggregation on the Mac. I’ve homegrown a quick and dirty little web-reader of my own, but I’m often tempted to use Safari’s amazing built-in aggregation ability.
A regular reader URL looks like this: feeds:nosheep.net/feed/
You may have discovered that when clicking the blue RSS link on the right of the URL bar. The more powerful aggregation can be found by creating a folder of RSS bookmarks. When you do this, you get the option to “View All RSS Articles”.
This creates a URL like: feeds:My%20News&nosheep.net/feed/&www.lifeaftercoffee.com/feed/atom/&borkweb.com/feed/
Each feed URL is delimited with a simple ampersand. You can extend this for as many feeds as you want. To get even cooler, add that link to your bookmark bar. As new articles are posted in any of the feeds, a little number will count up next to the bookmark for each unread article. This makes it easy to know when there is new stuff to read.
Tags: atom, bookmarks, feed, feeds, rss, safari
Uno - A Prettier, Unified OSX
August 20, 2006 | 1 Comment
Without a doubt I think Mac OS X is by far the most modern and attractive looking OS in existence. Seeing it side by side with Windows XP every day shows how far ahead it was. Imagine my surprise upon discovering Uno’s ability to make it even better.
Uno applies skins across many of the OSX applications, allowing you to replace the brushed metal look with more of the iTunes/iLife look. Matt has often complained about the brushed metal look, I have always been indifferent. Until now. Wow. Safari, iChat, Finder and more all have new life breathed into them by just simply replacing the brushed metal with gradients.
Install this application, you won’t be sorry.
Tags: apple, application, brushed metal, finder, gradient, ichat, iLife, itunes, macintosh, os x, osx, safari, skin, skinning, uno
My Web Development Toolkit
April 20, 2006 | 4 Comments
In addition to EditPlus as my favorite text editor, there are a few other tools I rely heavily on when doing web development.
The first is a simple tool, but one of the most valuable. Pixie is a utility for picking colors from various areas of the screen. It captures the RGB, CMYK, HSV, and most importantly HTML Hex values. With a simple shortcut key you can grab this value to your clipboard. It is extremely light and unbelievably useful.
Another common task I find myself repeating is measuring areas of the screen, primarily in pixels. For this I use JRuler. Again, this is a light utility that does exactly what it should without frills or excess.
To even my own surprise I find myself jumping regularly between Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox for browsers. However, if I’m doing and Ajax or general Javascript development, Firefox is the browser of choice. With that in mind, there are some must have extensions. You absolutely must get Web Developer and Firebug. These tools can strip hours off your overall development and testing time.
Tags: editplus, firefox, internet explorer, jruler, pixie, safari, web, web developer, web development